Lets take a look at some examples of how language changes in poetry. This is a slightly modified version (to make it a blog post) version of something I said in a video lecture you can watch here. This blog post is only the first section of the video, so if you’re interested you can watch the whole video, but you can also come back here and read more in an article soon.
So I want to start with poetry of the the early 20th century and move backward in time, and look at how a few of the poems written in that time demonstrate some of the changes in the English language. Any of these poems, I would love to talk more about. So, if you have questions about them or you have comments about them or you want to talk more about them, feel free, feel welcome, feel encouraged to do that on the course Discord, or by emailing me, or in the comments here, or on social media, or any of the many ways that you can find and get in touch with me.
William Butler Yates: Shaping 20th Century Language
I want to start with William Butler Yates writing in 1933. Yates is a great example of how language changes in the 20th century, the 19th and 20th century because he had a long career. So late in his life, he is using language in a 20th-century way, and early in his career as a writer in his life, he is using it in a late 19th-century way. This is "Leda and the Swan" by William Butler Yates, written in 1923 and published in 1924.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
This is a sonnet and a poem about Zeus's rape of Leda in the form of a swan. There is a lot to say about it poetically. Just very briefly: this is a scene from Greek mythology. Leda, in Greek mythology, gives birth to an egg which hatches Helen and Clytemnestra. Helen is Helen of Troy, and Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon who murders him in the bath. So, the broken wall, the burning roof, and the tower, and Agamemnon dead are all caused by this act. The idea in Yeats here is that it is Zeus's violence that leads to the consequences, the tragic, destructive, and violent consequences down the line. That this violence breeds future violence.
Linguistically, I just wanted to show it as an example of early 20th-century poetry that sounds very much like how we would use language in the early 21st century. People in the 21st century are less likely to say "great" meaning physically large. It meant good in as early as the 19th century. But Yeats is using it here to mean physically large wings, not good wings. This "vague" maybe he may be using it in the 19th-century sense of wandering, although it definitely has the subtext also of indistinct and poetic language. But even in the early 20th century, the way he's using it is unusual. "Engender" as he uses it here is also archaic, even in the early 20th century. So, he's using it in a poetic sense. Earlier in the 18th century, 19th century, it's already archaic. In the 19th century, it would be a term for procreating or producing offspring, and you could use it for humans, animals, plants, either parent. But Yeats is using it in an archaic, poetic, and literary sense.
W.B. Yeats and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
About 40 years earlier, in 1893, Yeats wrote another of his most well-known poems, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." This is a poem my dad used to quote when he stood up. If he was sitting, especially outside on a sunny day, if he was done, he'd stand up, and he'd say:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Poetically, this is a more beautiful but less complicated poem by Yeats. It's about a beautiful lake and how peaceful it would be to be there and how the world and how the roadway on the pavements grey make him hear a call to leave the modern world and go and sit in the woods by a lake. And have beans. Is, I think, relatable sentiment.
Certainly linguistically in this poem, we might point out:
"Shall" continues to be a Britishism, but it has dropped off a lot since the 19th century, even in British English and especially outside of British English. In the 20th century, "will" is more common in Ireland than "shall."
"Wattles" is a pretty rare word in the 19th century as now. Yeats isn't using it particularly in an archaic sense; he's just using poetic language with "wattles," which are stakes interlaced with twigs or branches to make a fence or walls.
"Bee-loud" is a neologism that the OED has only one citation for, and it is this.
The last thing to comment on here is the use of the word "arise," which again Yeats is using archaic, unusual, and poetic language. But "arise" is a word that has a sharp decline throughout the 19th century. So, in 1890, it's a little bit archaic; in 1930, it's quite a bit more archaic, and in 2023, no one says "I will arise" when they're standing up, unless you are quoting something.
Alfred Lord Tennyson: "Crossing the Bar"
Yeats writing in 1893 can be compared to Alfred Lord Tennyson writing in 1889 just a few years earlier. Tennyson also had a very long career. This is from the end of his career as a poet. This is a poem called "Crossing the Bar," one of his most famous poems:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
This is a poem about death, about Tennyson's sense of his impending death. An essential image in this poem is of a moaning sandbar. When you're at sea and you're coming in towards land, a sandbar that causes dangerously shallow waters can create low sounds that are a warning sign, the moaning of a sandbar. A moaning sandbar is a dangerous thing to cross, but might shipwreck you.
Linguistically, some things to point out that show the late 19th-century-ness of it:
The concept of "moaning" like a low sound or complaining is in English from 1400, but as applied to water or wind or inanimate objects, it's a 19th-century term. So, this is an example of something that, by the end of the 19th century, it's not that surprising a usage.
The spelling of "though" and "crossed" with an apostrophe and no "u" (tho' and crost) is a political statement. Tennyson was a member of the English Spelling Reform Association, and this spelling reform movement was specific to the late 19th century. So, this spelling is a late 19th-century perspective that he wouldn't have used earlier in his life, and indeed, he didn't. Yeats was not a member of a spelling reform. So, Yeats, writing at the same time, would spell both of those words as is standard today.
Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1830: "Claribel"
Comparing this to earlier in Tennyson's career, in 1830, this is "Claribel," his first hit of a poem:
Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.
At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss'd headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth.
Obviously, the "th"s for present tense verbs in the early 19th century, we don't see that in the late 19th century, we don't see that in either of the 1890s poems that I showed you. In 1830, it is deliberately archaic on Tennyson's part. But in poetic archaic literary language, people are still putting "th"s in present tense verbs, especially when they're trying to create a pastoral old-fashioned tone. Walt Whitman does it in "Leaves of Grass." But neither Yeats nor later Tennyson. Yeats, doesn't put "th"s on his words, the way Tennyson is doing in "Claribel."
The word "grot," which he uses here (a grotto), is also just barely in use in 1830. It's in common use but by 1880 would only be in a poem by Tennyson that you would see the word "grot." So, we're catching it here right at the end. Maybe he is using it deliberately archaically; this is an old-fashioned sounding poem, even for 1830. But it could be just a word in 1830. In 1880, no, "grot" has left standard usage.
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